Stoic View: Inclination Toward Virtue

In this episode I take my favourite holiday film, A Muppet Christmas Carol, and use it to explore the Stoic idea that every human being is pulled toward moral excellence—even when they have spent years rolling downhill in the wrong shape. Scrooge’s story gives us a clear picture of how isolation, habit, early wounds, and neglect warp a person’s disposition, and how a return to goodness is still possible when someone is willing to face their past, see the present clearly, and respond to both with honesty and concern.

Key takeaways from this episode include:

1. Isolation blinds us to our shared humanity — and when we habituate isolation, we become harder, colder, and more unjust without even knowing it.

2. The Stoics believed every person has an inborn pull toward Virtue — but that pull is often overridden by poor habits, early trauma, or years of vicious choosing.

3. Scrooge’s transformation shows it is never too late to change shape — our rational faculty can always realign with the natural inclination toward the good.

4. Seeing the goodness of others corrects our cynical view of the world — most people are doing the best they can with what they have, even in hard conditions.

5. Holiday “magic” can be understood Stoically as the felt pull toward Virtue — and we don’t need to limit that awareness to one season.

6. True change requires facing the past, seeing the present, and choosing better now — just as Scrooge does with each ghost and each revelation.

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